A Week in Winter(88)

‘I would have expected no less,’ she said.

Rigger hoped he would have a moment to warn Chicky that it was time to fasten the seatbelts.

Chicky didn’t need the warning. The body language alone was enough to alert her that Miss Howe was not going to be a happy camper. She stood stiff and unyielding in the group that had gathered in the big cheerful kitchen. She refused a sherry or glass of wine, asking instead for a glass of plain tonic water with ice and lemon. She nodded wordlessly when introduced to fellow guests.

She said she didn’t need to see her room and freshen up; since she was one of the last to arrive, she wouldn’t delay the meal by absenting herself. She had a knack of bringing conversations to an end with her pronouncements.

She showed no interest in the itineraries and options that Chicky laid out for them. One by one the guests gave up on her.

The American man asked her what kind of business she was in, and she said that, unlike in the United States, people here didn’t judge others on what occupation they had or used to have.

A Swedish boy told her that it was his second visit to Ireland, and he barely managed to reach the end of his first sentence before she made her boredom clear.

A nurse called Winnie wondered if Miss Howe had toured in the West before, and she shrugged, saying not that she could remember. Two polite English doctors told her that they were astounded by the spectacular scenery. Miss Howe said that she had arrived in the dark and hadn’t seen anything remarkable so far.

When Orla, who served at the table, asked her if the meal was satisfactory, Miss Howe replied that if it hadn’t been she would certainly have mentioned it. It would be doing the establishment no favours not to speak her mind.

As Chicky Starr showed Miss Howe to her room after dinner, she waited for some small expression of pleasure at the beautiful furniture, the fresh new linen on the bed, the tray with the best china tea things . . . everybody else had admired them.

Miss Howe had just nodded briefly.

‘I’m sure you’re tired after the journey,’ Chicky Starr said, biting back her disappointment and trying to forgive the lack of response.

‘Hardly. I just sat in a train the whole way from Dublin.’ Miss Howe was taking no prisoners.

And for the days that followed, alone among the guests Miss Howe found nothing to praise, no delight in the wild scenery, no appreciation for the food that Orla and Chicky served every night.

Chicky sat beside the strange, uncommunicative woman in order to spare the guests from the ordeal of trying to talk to her. Even for Chicky, with a background of years working in a New York boarding house with a room full of men dulled by work in the construction industry, this was hard going.

Miss Howe never asked a question or made an observation. Whatever had gone wrong in her life had gone very wrong indeed.

On the fourth morning when Miss Howe had yet again shown no interest in exploring the coastline, Chicky begged Rigger to drive her to the market town with him.

‘Oh God, Chicky, do I have to? She’ll turn the milk sour.’

‘Please, Rigger, otherwise she’ll just sit staring at me all day and I’ve a lot of cooking to do.’

Rigger was good-natured about it. Apart from Miss Howe, the week was going so very well. All these people were going to praise the place to the skies. Stone House would take off as they had always believed it would. One day with Miss Howe wouldn’t kill him.

Any questions about how she was enjoying the holiday met with a brick wall, so he chatted away cheerfully about his own life. He told Miss Howe about his two children: the twins, Rosie and Macken, and nodded proudly at their photographs stuck up on the dashboard of his van.

‘They get their looks from their mother,’ he said proudly. ‘I hope they get their brains from her too! Not too many brains on their dad’s side.’

‘And were your parents stupid?’ she asked. Her voice was cold, but it was the only time she seemed interested in a conversation.

‘My mother wasn’t. I never knew my father,’ he said.

Most people would have said they were sorry, or that was a pity, but Miss Howe said nothing.

‘Were your parents bright, Miss Howe?’ Rigger asked.

She paused. It was as if she was deciding whether to answer or not. Eventually she said, ‘No, not at all. My mother was a very unfit person to be anywhere near children. She left home when I was eleven and my father couldn’t cope. He lost his job and died of drink.’

‘Aw God, that was a poor start, Miss Howe. And did you have brothers and sisters to see you through?’

‘One younger brother, but he didn’t do well, I’m afraid. He made nothing of his life.’

‘And there was no one to look out for him?’

Again a pause.

‘No, there wasn’t, as it happened.’

‘Wasn’t that very sad. And you were too young to do anything for the lad. I was lucky. I hit a bit of a rough spot but I had my mam always looking out for me, writing to me every week even when I got sent to the reform school. She tried her best for me, even if it took coming here to sort me out properly. I’d fallen behind on the old reading and writing, you see. It took me a while to catch up. I didn’t get any exams or anything, but I got my head together and everything.’

‘Why didn’t she make you do exams?’

‘Ah, she knew I was never going to be a professor, Miss Howe. She worked all the time to put food on the table but still, it wasn’t easy to see everyone else with money when I didn’t have any.’